We can help this world by helping our Muslim brothers to redefine
themselves in ways in parallelism with global world involving blending of
cultures and openness to beliefs and lifestyles. More than anything, it will
save non-Muslims from hair-raising problems at many levels in future.
Secular theorists should be gagged for some time and allow some real
practical talk and do some reality check. We have to find ways to gradually
melt paranoid apprehension in Muslim minds regarding anything non-Muslim, be it
dress, places of worship, mode of prayer, food, relationships and what not!
We have to ensure that next generation of Muslims is more tolerant to
those beyond the Muslim walls having their own distinct ways of life. We have
to tell educated next generation of Muslims that touching a Hindu temple’s
walls from outside does not mean they have lost their Muslimhood. We Hindus are
very lenient in that we accommodate multiple realities linked to
inter-religious strains. We hardly have any qualms about entering and even
offering prayers in dargahas and mosques. Muslims are conditioned to take any
such bravado into others’ shrines as blasphemous. An ultra-modern, educated
Muslim colleague of mine in corporate used to openly throw Tuesday prashada
into the dustbin. Well it was just a simple ritual by God-abiding Hindu
employees to collect money on Tuesday and distribute prashada on the floor. If
the educated lot behaves that way, imagine the situation in crammed slum type
Muslim neighborhoods!
Islam has to be fundamentally redefined to inculcate mercy at its core
philosophy like other world religions. A lady colleague of mine still gets
palpitations when she recalls an incident from her childhood in an African
country. Her father had taken her to visit his Muslim friend’s house. All went
well till she saw the host’s small kid catching a mouse and scooping out its
eyes with playful relish. The proud father just looked droolingly. The
fundamental philosophy is to kill the softer side in the young ones to make
them less tolerant, less humane, aggressive and merciless so as to annihilate
the kafirs and non-believers. We have seen the consequences of this fundamental
Islamic approach in war-torn and strife-lorn Muslim countries where kid jehadis
commit heinous crimes against humanity with the ease of performing something
holy!
By sticking to the rigid medieval line, Muslims still think that there
are enemies around and they have to stay like a pack of wolves to ward off the
danger. This psychology is reflected in crammed, unhygienic, slumish Muslim neighborhoods
where the age-old lifestyles are forced to stay alive in semi dark behind
closed walls overlooking narrow streets. Even those well-to-do Muslims who can
afford to shift to better social environment prefer to stay here. In fact there
has been a reverse trend. Upper class Muslim families have shifted to congested
predominantly Muslim colonies from the earlier secular kafir-infested locations
having better facilities. It does not augur well for a cosmopolitan society.
The governments world over have to devise direct and indirect, covert and
overt ways and means to break this fear psychosis in Muslim minds to draw them out
of the wolfish packs behind closed walls and redistribute and relocate them as prosperous
neighbors of tolerant culture involving people of different religions.
Governments and their institutions have to bring about subtle fundamental
changes in the ways Islamists lead their lives so that at least the next generation
of Muslims would not look stealthily, apprehensively over the Islamic walls and
peer at the world outside as an alien entity. If this is not done then the world
inside Muslim neighborhoods and outside will become so different that it will have
sky and earth differentials. Such differentials never allow stability. The remedial
effort might even involve nurturing modern maulvis who keep Koran and computer together!!
